ABUJA, Nigeria — Ishaq Oloyede, the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has revealed that he briefly considered resigning from his position following the technical error that disrupted the conduct and credibility of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
JAMB had released the 2025 UTME results on Friday, May 9, 2025, but widespread dissatisfaction quickly followed when it was discovered that over 78 percent of candidates scored below 200 out of a possible 400.
Mounting protests from affected students and their families prompted the board to initiate an internal review, which uncovered a significant technical malfunction.
On May 14, Oloyede publicly acknowledged that the responses of 379,997 candidates, taken across 157 centres in Lagos and the south-east, had not been properly uploaded due to faulty server updates.
The glitch, attributed to one of JAMB’s contracted technical service providers, occurred during the first three days of the exam and went unnoticed until after the initial results were published.
In an effort to salvage the integrity of the examination process, JAMB scheduled a resit for affected candidates beginning May 16, with the process extending beyond May 19.
Speaking during a meeting with chief external examiners, civil society organisations, and stakeholders from tertiary institutions in Abuja on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, Oloyede admitted that the backlash and allegations—some of which included claims of ethnic bias and institutional sabotage—took a personal toll.
“When it happened, my first reaction was to resign,” he said.
“But people advised me that the students would never forgive me because it would look like I abandoned them at such a time.”
